Numbers 14:26-38

The Judgment Pronounced

v. 26. And the Lord spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying,

v. 27. How long shall I bear with this evil congregation which murmur against Me? being incorrigible in their dissatisfied opposition to the ways of the Lord's dispensation. I have heard the murmurings of the children of Israel which they murmur against Me, for they were continually engaged in grumbling of this kind.

v. 28. Say unto them, As truly as I live, saith the Lord, as ye have spoken in Mine ears, so will I do to you, Cf v. 2:

v. 29. your carcasses shall fall in this wilderness; literally, "in this very wilderness shall fall your dead bodies"; and all that were numbered of you, according to your whole number, from twenty years old and upward, which have murmured against Me,

v. 30. doubtless ye shall not come into the land concerning which I sware, by a solemn lifting up of the hand, to make you dwell therein, save Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, and Joshua, the son of Nun. They would see for themselves whether the oath which the Lord had now sworn by His own life would be fulfilled; they would find out whether a single one of the dissatisfied murmurers would reach the Land of Promise.

v. 31. But your little ones, which ye said should be a prey,

v. 3. them will I bring in, and they shall know the land which ye have despised.

v. 32. But as for you, as the Lord here repeats for the sake of emphasis, your carcasses, they shall fall in this wilderness.

v. 33. And your children shall wander in the wilderness forty years, sustaining themselves as nomads with their herds in the wastes of the Sinaitic Peninsula, and bear your whoredoms, to expiate, in a way, the spiritual unfaithfulness of their fathers, until your carcasses be wasted in the wilderness, until the desert had consumed even the last of them.

v. 34. After the number of the days in which ye searched the land, even forty days, Numbers 13:25, each day for a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years, and ye shall know My breach of promise; they would experience what it means when the Lord turns from a people in anger, being obliged to withdraw or to change His original promise.

v. 35. I, the Lord, have said, I will surely do it unto all this evil congregation that are gathered together against Me; in this wilderness they shall be consumed, and there they shall die.

v. 36. And the men which Moses sent to search the land, who" returned and made all the congregation to murmur against him, by bringing up a slander upon the land, by misrepresenting the facts about Canaan and exaggerating the difficulties of conquering its people,

v. 37. even those men that did bring up the evil report upon the land, died by the plague before the Lord; the punishment struck them very suddenly, and struck them down as the first among the rebellious people.

v. 38. But Joshua, the son of Nun, and Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, which were of the men that went to search the land, lived still, their preservation, in the circumstances, being all the more remarkable, and substantiating the word of the Lord. The judgment upon such as were leaders in the Church and abused the trust placed in them by leading their people astray, will be especially harsh.